Grimms' Fairy Tales, Hansel and Gretel, sentence 3

He had little to bite and to break, and once when great dearth fell on the land, he could no longer procure even daily bread.

Who acts: boy, little, great dearth · What happens: have, bite, break, fall, procure · To what, where: little, land, daily bread

This is a sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, Hansel and Gretel. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (boy, little, great dearth), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher. This tree is Mova's own parse (the en model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

The tree

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	He	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	2 had	nsubj
2	had	have	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	little	little	ADJ	Degree=Pos	2 had	obj
4	to	to	PART	_	5 bite	mark
5	bite	bite	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	3 little	xcomp
6	and	and	CCONJ	_	8 break	cc
7	to	to	PART	_	8 break	mark
8	break	break	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	5 bite	conj
9	,	,	PUNCT	_	15 fell	punct
10	and	and	CCONJ	_	15 fell	cc
11	once	once	ADV	NumForm=Word NumType=Mult	15 fell	advmod
12	when	when	ADV	PronType=Int	15 fell	advmod
13	great	great	ADJ	Degree=Pos	14 dearth	amod
14	dearth	dearth	NOUN	Number=Sing	15 fell	nsubj
15	fell	fall	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	2 had	conj
16	on	on	ADP	_	18 land	case
17	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	18 land	det
18	land	land	NOUN	Number=Sing	15 fell	obl
19	,	,	PUNCT	_	24 procure	punct
20	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	24 procure	nsubj
21	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	24 procure	aux
22	no	no	ADV	_	23 longer	advmod
23	longer	long	ADV	Degree=Cmp	24 procure	advmod
24	procure	procure	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	2 had	conj
25	even	even	ADV	_	27 bread	advmod
26	daily	daily	ADJ	Degree=Pos	27 bread	amod
27	bread	bread	NOUN	Number=Sing	24 procure	obl
28	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 had	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	have	past	boy	little			vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent little=Patient
2	bite	to-infinitive	little not said here				vn swat-18.2 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent
3	break	to-infinitive	little not said here				vn hurt-40.8.3-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Patient
4	fall	past	great dearth		the land	once property	vn occur-48.3 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme on land=Location
5	procure	could	boy	daily bread		long property	vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent

One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

Text: «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, Project Gutenberg book 2591 (public domain in the USA). Tree: Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. Frames: Mova's frames reader (prag), the chapter read in order.

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